From a Los Angeles Times story by John McMurtrie headlined “The California bookseller behind City Lights gets his moment”:

Paul Yamazaki did not grow up loving books. As a teenager in the San Fernando Valley, he was directionless. “I was the despair of my parents,” he recalled. “I was an incredibly poor student and got incredibly poor grades.” Today, at age 74, Yamazaki is one of the literary world’s most respected and beloved book buyers.